CC ranking system is simply bad

[YukikoKurosawa]

What I've noticed is the people who are enjoying Ranked are generally Crystal players (mostly who ranked up super fast), where as the people who are not enjoying it are hard stuck in lower teirs.

Really makes you think.

[ThaCa]

What I've noticed is the people who are enjoying Ranked are generally Crystal players (mostly who ranked up super fast), where as the people who are not enjoying it are hard stuck in lower teirs.

Really makes you think.

From my experience going through the lower ranks, they are far more volatile. Individual skill differences and game plans are so all over the place that every game is a huge gamble and while your carry potential is bigger there, your team's potential to throw is a lot bigger than in Crystal where most people actually regroup after staggered team wipe. It can be incredibly frustrating to deal with the inconsistency and trying to form your own gameplay style or rack up experience and learning when things that worked in previous game might do nothing in the next.

I can understand the frustration when you barely get to play the same game and instead of having a good fight fairly often it instead just ends up feeling like coinflip. Hopefully they figure out how to remedy this in future, it would be nice if everyone had a chance to enjoy the gameplay.

[Gserpent]

From my experience going through the lower ranks, they are far more volatile. Individual skill differences and game plans are so all over the place that every game is a huge gamble and while your carry potential is bigger there, your team's potential to throw is a lot bigger than in Crystal where most people actually regroup after staggered team wipe. It can be incredibly frustrating to deal with the inconsistency and trying to form your own gameplay style or rack up experience and learning when things that worked in previous game might do nothing in the next.

I can understand the frustration when you barely get to play the same game and instead of having a good fight fairly often it instead just ends up feeling like coinflip. Hopefully they figure out how to remedy this in future, it would be nice if everyone had a chance to enjoy the gameplay.

I think the best place to start is to simply dramatically widen the leveling process and make team-balancing a bit stricter. I think longer queue times are acceptable, within reason, if they more consistently result in balanced games (can't control for player attitudes and behavior but that's why we have GMs right?) I certainly don't mind waiting a few minutes between games if it means games are a bit more balanced and enjoyable. But right now the process for leveling is so fast, and takes so little time, that it ceases to have meaning. At bare minimum, every tier except unranked should have 5 risers, of 5 stars each.

Win streak bonuses should be changed to bonus Wolf Marks, XP, Series XP, and PvP XP instead of bonus stars (and thus Crystal could then have win streaks again too.) Break the tiers up into matchmaking brackets. Unranked through Silver 5, Silver 4 through Gold 2, Gold 1 through Diamond 1, and Crystal is its own thing. Assign a point value to each rank, riser, and star count and attempt to balance teams such that their totals are equivalent. Crystal would also need revision - I'd recommend starting at 1000 rating and *at least* doubling the current gains/losses per game, and change the math so that as you get higher and higher in rating, you reach a point where you win substantially fewer points than you would lose for games where there is a substantial rating discrepancy between teams.

Alternatively, Crystal could be changed such that you lose no points on a loss, and instead you can only ever gain points (you would start at 0 Rating in this case.) I think the former system would be better for a competitive ladder, but I frankly like the idea of the latter more because it suits a "casual competitive" game like CC better, IMO.

[JamieRose]

From my experience going through the lower ranks, they are far more volatile. Individual skill differences and game plans are so all over the place that every game is a huge gamble and while your carry potential is bigger there, your team's potential to throw is a lot bigger than in Crystal where most people actually regroup after staggered team wipe. It can be incredibly frustrating to deal with the inconsistency and trying to form your own gameplay style or rack up experience and learning when things that worked in previous game might do nothing in the next.

I can understand the frustration when you barely get to play the same game and instead of having a good fight fairly often it instead just ends up feeling like coinflip. Hopefully they figure out how to remedy this in future, it would be nice if everyone had a chance to enjoy the gameplay.

Volatile is a gentle way to put it. I can think of better words for it and most of them rhyme with truck. There is no real sense of strategy or cohesion, it is merely the team with less lemmings on it wins. For me that's the other team in, I'd say a good 66% of matches which seems well within Squeenix's acceptable margin of fluctuation or whatever cockamamie algorithm they use to justify this..."volatility".